I am having a really hard time understanding how to pronounce the R. I have a natural instinct to pronounce it through the back of my throat like I'm about to gargle because that is how the name of the letter sounds when I hear it from the pronunciation lesson. However, when I hear R-word audio files available, it sounds a bit different and I can't isolate the sound. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it sounds a bit different from word to word to me. Sometimes it sounds like a regular English R and sometimes it sounds like there is an L before or after the R.

Can anyone give me advice on pronouncing R or show me a link to some R-word audio files or an audio file of the R sound by itself?

It's not an R in the back of your throat. It's lightly rolled, much like in Spanish.

blahface:I am having a really hard time understanding how to pronounce the R. I have a natural instinct to pronounce it through the back of my throat like I'm about to gargle because that is how the name of the letter sounds when I hear it from the pronunciation lesson. However, when I hear R-word audio files available, it sounds a bit different and I can't isolate the sound. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it sounds a bit different from word to word to me. Sometimes it sounds like a regular English R and sometimes it sounds like there is an L before or after the R.

Can anyone give me advice on pronouncing R or show me a link to some R-word audio files or an audio file of the R sound by itself?

The closest sound in English, at least in most English dialects, would be the "T" in "waiter" (if you listen to yourself say that word, you should be able to hear that the T there is not a normal "T" sound). The difference is that the Esperanto R is just a light tap with the tip of the tongue, whereas the English T-as-in-waiter is a heavier "flap", but both are articulated at the same place in your mouth (i.e. the ridge just behind your teeth).

The letter L is formed similarly (and so it sounds similar to some). The main difference is that is that an L doesn't stop the flow of air from the mouth, but lets it out laterally on either side of the tongue. Personally, I feel like when I say "halo" my tongue is slightly bending forward when transitioning from the A to the L, whereas in "haro" my tongue is curling back slightly from the A to the R.

The "gargling" R in the back of your throat is more of a French or German R. The Esperanto letter "ĥ" incidentally is articulated there, but is unvoiced.

The Bildoj kaj demandoj introductory course on this site has lots of sound files with good pronunciation.

Hi blahface,

I'll take a stab at helping you, although more experienced folks should feel free to jump in at any time...

From my understanding, Esperanto speakers/listeners are very forgiving regarding pronunciation. Because Esperanto is designed to be an international language, it pays to tolerate the differences that come from very different primary languages.

Esperanto essentially has only one sound for every letter, and only one letter for every sound. This means that typically a particular sound will only be "close to" the sound for one Esperanto letter. So for instance, a pretty wide range of pronunciations for the letter R are all recognizable as the letter R (this applies to other letters, too).

All of which means you don't have to worry about it too much; as long as your pronunciation is closer to R than any other Esperanto letter, it will be recognizable and understandable.

That being said, for my part, while I listen forgivingly, I try to speak as precisely as I can. I believe Esperanto R is supposed to be what is called a "trill", "rolled r", or to be extremely precise, "apical alveolar trill".

I don't know what part of the US you live in. I'm in Arizona though, where we have a large number of Spanish-speaking people. I believe the Esperanto R is intended to sound like a Spanish rolled r as in the word perro. That's a trill.

In case you don't have any Spanish-speaking acquaintances to listen to, I'll make an attempt to describe how to pronounce the sound. Between your upper teeth and the roof of your mouth is a ridge, known as the alveolar ridge. Place your tongue so that the sides and end touch the ridge in a way that stops you from breathing through your mouth; you'll have to breathe through your nose. Now stop breathing through your nose and force air out through your mouth so that the end of your tongue (not the side) vibrates against the roof of your mouth as the air comes out. That's an alveolar trill.

Once you can do that, you should be able to get the same vibration of the tip of your tongue without having to hold the sides of your tongue against the ridge; just place the tip of your tongue on the ridge and blow air out past it so that it vibrates. That's an apical alveolar trill. According to my understanding, that's the ideal pronunciation of Esperanto R. It's probably also what you describe as having an L before or after the R.

But as I explained above, the "ideal" pronunciation isn't strictly necessary to be understood. If the trill is too difficult for you to pronounce, a good alternative is to pronounce it as what you call a "regular English R", technically an "alveolar approximant". In listening to lernu! sound files, I believe the R is also frequently pronounced this way by speakers who can pronounce the trill, but who are speaking quickly.

[to be continued]

[continuing]

The sound is also sometimes pronounced much like what you might call a regular English D. (Like the sound trojo is describing as the t in "waiter".), technically known as an alveolar tap. Trojo seems to be saying that this is the ideal pronunciation; I was under the impression that the trill was, so perhaps someone can clear that up for us.

The sound you describe as being in the back of your throat is called a uvular approximant or fricative. It compares to the French R, as trojo said. Some English speakers pronounce the R in gaRage that way. I'm not familiar with this being a common pronunciation of Esperanto R. However, as I said at the beginning of my previous message, if the sound is more like an R than any other letter, you're likely to be understood.

I hope my comments help and don't make you too dizzy in their use of technical terms.

By the way, I'd like to attribute the Wikipedia entry for Rhotic Consonant as a source.

Charmina

[Incidentally, when I started I would have been the first reply, but of course I wrote so much in that first part that two other people had time to jump in. I don't know trojo, but Erinja would definitely be one of the more experienced people I invited to jump in at any time.]

Charmina:The sound is also sometimes pronounced much like what you might call a regular English D. (Like the sound trojo is describing as the t in "waiter".), technically known as an alveolar tap. Trojo seems to be saying that this is the ideal pronunciation; I was under the impression that the trill was, so perhaps someone can clear that up for us.

The alveolar trill and alveolar tap are considered allophones (i.e. they are considered the "same" sound as far as the language is concerned, even though they aren't really). The trill is more ideal I guess, but it is not unusual when listening to recordings of experienced Esperanto speakers (e.g. in the Radio 3ZZZ archives) to hear the same speaker tap some R's and trill others, or tap all of their R's. Many will trill only when speaking slowly/carefully and tap otherwise; others seem to switch randomly (perhaps some combinations of trilled R with other consonants are more awkward than others, e.g. in the word "interreto" both R's ideally should be pronounced distinctly enough to be heard as separate). The tap version is generally much easier to master though.

This situation is unlike, for example, Spanish where the r in "pero" is a tap and the rr in "perro" is a trill. In Esperanto the two sounds are essentially interchangeable.

I think this is going to be a problem area for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience in Spanish.

It is pretty important for me to get it right though because while I am learning Esperanto, I am trying to make an Esperanto tutorial program in Java. It is going to be very similar to the lessons on this site, but I want the user to be able to work more with audio.

blahface:I think this is going to be a problem area for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience in Spanish.

It is pretty important for me to get it right though because while I am learning Esperanto, I am trying to make an Esperanto tutorial program in Java. It is going to be very similar to the lessons on this site, but I want the user to be able to work more with audio.

In that case I recommend listening to as much well-pronounced Esperanto audio as you can, to develop a feel for it. R was tricky for me too, much trickier than the infamous ĥ, in fact. What I did was, once I could make the R-sound correctly sometimes, I just went and said arbaro arbaro arbaro over and over till I had it down cold. If you want a harder tongue-twister to practice with, try kvar raraj arbaroj.

I found a tip that seems to be helping my fiance, who also has problems with the alveolar tap.

Say the word 'butter' but with the American accent that makes it sound like 'budder'. The movement of the tongue is very similar to the 'r' sound you're after. Say the word 'butter' like this repeatedly as quickly as you can, 'butter butter butter butter butter butter' until the words start running together and you start to naturally 'cheat' on the b/d sound. Eventually try to leave of the 'bu' part of the word. This should leave you with an alveolar tap.

The Esperanto R is a tap, not a trill, in most cases. Therefore, it is more like the r in Spanish "pero" than the rr in "perro", although there are certain cases where it naturally becomes the rr in "perro".

It's a pretty standard rolled R actually. It's also like the Italian r. You could go to any website teaching Spanish or Italian to hear this R.

I think the lernu alphabet example presents the R just fine; however, due to the deep voice of the person reading the letters, perhaps the letter sounded more guttural to you than it really is.

The Ana Pana course is recorded fairly slowly, so you can hear the pronunciations and easily compare it to the text.

As some people already mentioned, Esperanto is spoken by a wide range of people, and with a wide ranges of accents. Not every recording on this site will sound exactly the same, not only because they are recorded by different speakers, but also because the speakers come from different national backgrounds, and that affects their accents. Esperanto speakers need to understand a range of accents to effectively use the language.